Harraga (27 page)

‘Chérifa came to us three weeks ago. She was in a piteous state. She had been wandering the streets of Algiers when a charitable soul, a friend of the order, noticed her. She brought Chérifa here, thinking it was the best thing to do. And in all conscience, I believe it was, though ordinarily our standing and our means make us ill-equipped to deal with such requests. We are tolerated here, no more than that. We offer some small service to the local people, they are so poor they dare not go into the city. I thought long and hard, it is a great responsibility, but given her circumstances, I took her in. I don’t know whether a hospital would have admitted her, she is . . . she was a minor, unmarried, pregnant and . . . bizarrely attired, hee! hee! Blida is an extremely conservative town, ruled by the Islamists. I was frightened for her, they can be so . . . so . . .’

‘If they were just evil, spiteful, vile and satanic, I wouldn’t mind, but they’re narrow-minded and stupid too,’ I said, to help her out.

‘You should not say such things, they are very dangerous. If they should hear you . . .’

‘There’s no fear of that, they’re deaf to all things human.’

‘I called upon a doctor who is a friend of the convent, Doctor Salem, it has been a long time since he practised, but he still has his wits. He took care of her and she quickly recuperated somewhat. I have a number of useful skills myself. We therefore felt she would be able to give birth here in the convent . . . She was so endearing, with her belly button almost touching her chin and that fearless air of hers!’

‘Did she have her holdall?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Her clothes, her belongings, the baby clothes.’

‘Her bag? Oh yes, she dragged it behind her by the strap, it looked like a puppy refusing to walk, hee! hee! hee!’

The slightest thing made the Mother Superior giggle. But she quickly became grave and abstracted. She sat for a moment, silent, thoughtful, staring into the distance, glancing here and there, at the ceiling, at her pale, slender hands clasped in her lap, at the crucifix hanging on the wall or a particular book on the shelves. This, to me, is what religion should mean: to silently contemplate the world, alert to its every murmur, its every tremor. There should be no need for troops and cannons. Words, sighs, glances, they are sufficient. Sister Anne’s eyes radiated the sort of awed apprehensiveness that clearly came from constant prayer. And from penitence, I imagine. Though they live isolated from the world of men, and in close proximity to the Lord, every day the Sisters here must find some minor sin to be erased. I would not be at all surprised to discover she experiences ecstatic visions. There are places such as this, austere, modest, where dream and reality become one as prayers are said. My old house is a little like that; ringing as it is with myth and mysteries and with the echo of unanswered prayers, I don’t know whether I am more enthralled by image or by shadow, nor why I spend my time talking to the dead, or rather to their ghosts. I thought about Maman who had the same habit of searching around whenever she began recounting one of our old family stories. It was as though, rummaging through a cluttered past, she chanced upon it by accident. At some point in this ritual, her eyes would suddenly light up. Something that had baffled her a little she could now see clearly, see the thread of the story amid the confusion of sundry images, she could draw it towards her and reveal its warp and weft, its magical design. In fits and starts of ‘Um . . . Oh, that’s right . . . ah yes, I remember now . . . let me just think,’ she would beat this carpet, dust off the cobwebs then, not quite herself, she would gently tease it out, as though fearful that, if she brought it too quickly from her memory, it might break or that our family secrets might come into contact with the poisoned air of the present, might wither before they could be known. We would wait with bated breath, ready to draw near the better to take in the apparition. I still have her words in my ear; one by one I took them in, treasured them, stored them in the hollow of my memory, more to reassure her than to hear them. She told us these wondrous stories so many times that we scarcely thought about them. I am obsessed by the tale of Tata Houria which is fascinating and terrible. I often think about Tata Houria, one of Maman’s cousins, about what part love played in her odyssey and what part madness. Because to do what she did, for as long as she did, there had to be something going on in her head. In those unfathomable and uncertain days back in the
douar
, where there was no thought of deliverance, people lived and died as Adam had done. Firstly, Tata Houria refused to mourn her husband and allow herself to be remarried. Then, she died far from the
douar
, something no woman had ever done before her – indeed so far from the
douar
that no one knows quite where – in India, Guatemala, America, Poland or elsewhere. Maman could not remember the name of the country, the poor thing had no notion of geography, she knew the village where she had grown up and Rampe Valée and nothing beyond. She vaguely knew the Kasbah, where she would go once a month with her old friend Zineb to drink mint tea and discuss all the misfortunes in the world since Adam and Eve, talk a little about magic to steel themselves, then, all keyed up, they would rush around visiting the shrines and the mausoleums. Beyond these frontiers, all the world was darkness. Houria’s odyssey began during the Second World War and ended thirty years later in obscurity and legend. Scarcely had Tata Houria been wed than her young husband was called up and sent to war. She waited for his return as women have long learned to wait, praying and weeping in secret. Then one day came the marvellous, unexpected news: all over the planet, people were celebrating the end of the war. One by one survivors trudged home, scrawny, haggard, crippled, but not her husband. ‘Missing, presumed dead,’ according to the government letter read out to the villagers gathered around the local schoolteacher. ‘Wait and see,’ was the unanimous conclusion as everyone returned to their own preoccupations. The post-war years brought famine and unleashed great anger.

For several years Tata Houria waited in her tumbledown hovel as the days trickled past; she moved to Algiers where she waited a few years more then left for France where in this town or that she continued her wait. When nothing came, she moved to Germany – a country where disappearing was commonplace in the years after the Apocalypse. There, in one city or another, she waited a few years more in the company of others who had come from far-flung places in order to wait. As the circle rippled out, she waited all over the world. One day, a scrawled letter arrived in the
douar
announcing her death. The schoolteacher – a different one, a young man freshly graduated from university – was unable to read it and asked around until finally one day he appeared in the tiny village square, brandishing the letter to announce the results of his research: the letter, dated 22 June 1966 and written in pidgin French, had come from the far side of the world and was signed simply Rosita. This good soul said that it was she who had closed the eyes of Tata Houria, having taken her in and cared for her. She had found her by the roadside waiting to die. But by then the
douar
was no longer as it had been; the children had left never to return and the old people no longer remembered anything. The story was forgotten by everyone but Maman, who would tell it to us every time it rained on the city and every time it rained in her head. Poor, wonderful Houria, she died without ever giving up hope that she might find the man she had loved as a girl. Like Maman I would like to believe that in the next world, her husband had been waiting for her just as lovingly from the very moment he lost his way and his life. It’s true, this story haunts me.

The Mother Superior spoke to me at length after her fashion, using few words and long silences. Chérifa made herself at home in the convent precisely as she had in my house and at the university halls of residence. I’d describe it as an invasion followed by a systematic obliteration of the inhabitants’ frame of reference at the cost of great sacrifice. Her blood pressure was dangerously low, she was nine months pregnant, all skin and bone, yet in a few short days she managed to turn a tranquil convent into a railway station at rush hour. Her laundry fluttered from every window, every arrow-slit, her radioactive perfume drowned out the scents of incense and soot which had good reason to linger. The nuns rushed around trying to keep up with her, they could not possibly catch her. They’re all ancient and they have no flair for competition. Eventually, she came to a stop in mid-dash, overcome by an inexplicable spasm. And then her waters broke. She was running a high temperature, she visibly paled. Everything happened quickly, the contractions, a last gleam shone in her eyes, a last word trembled on her lips. ‘We were confused, we were helpless, we prayed harder than we had ever done in our lives. This calmed her, the pain subsided or she found it easier to bear.’ Sister Anne’s voice was heavy with remorse. I know the feeling: at Parnet, we are constantly dealing with emergencies and, not having the resources, we suddenly panic and we appeal to God, implore any name that comes to our lips, and then, abruptly, comes the silence and the cold that sends us back to our corners, pale, dazed, clammy, and overcome by guilt once more.

‘She died peacefully . . . she was smiling, her mouth was open,’ the Mother Superior whispered tenderly.

‘Yes. That’s how she always slept, her mouth open, her eyes half-closed, her arms crossed . . . and her legs.’

‘Yes, she had her peculiar little ways.’

‘She had her peculiar little ways in everything she did. I mean, she decided to die in a convent while giving birth, which says a lot.’

‘It’s cruel to say such things.’

‘I apologise. Like her, I have my little ways of being stupid and cruel.’

‘She talked about you all the time. Lamia, Lamia, Lamia . . . Just before she passed away, she whispered
Where’s Maman Lamia? Please tell her to come.

‘Ma . . . Maman?’

There are words like this, words that express all the happiness in the world. I have spent so many years longing to hear that word. I felt myself melt inside while an electric current trilled through me and every hair on my body stood on end. I could no longer contain my tears, nor could Sister Anne.

‘Yes . . . Maman.’

‘I suppose I was her mother and I didn’t realise it . . . or she didn’t realise it. We somehow kept missing each other . . .’

‘God willed it so, my child.’

‘You believe that He willed it so?’

‘I do.’

‘I wish some things were in our control, at least that way we’d know why we make each other miserable. But I suppose if I am here it is because God wills it.’

‘No doubt, no doubt.’

The ensuing silence seemed the only possible answer to these delicate questions. I did not dare to break it. Realising this, Sister Anne continued in a lighter tone.

‘She told stories about you and she mimicked the phrases you use: “
Would you credit it! Did you ever hear the like? And I don’t know what else!
” She could be difficult . . . but it was just that she liked to poke fun.’

‘Oh, she could be absolutely unbearable.’

‘Now she’s with God, she’ll calm down, depend on it.’

‘Hmm . . . maybe . . . maybe you’re right.’

‘After the birth, she regained consciousness just long enough to see the baby, she smiled down at that little face and explained the great plans she had. It was so funny! She . . .’

Something had clicked. Some vast, incredible piece of news had fallen into place.

‘Say that again . . .’ I spluttered.

‘It looked like she was going to pull through, but two days later . . .’

‘No, what you said just before.’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t . . . What’s the matter?’

‘The baby – it’s alive?’

‘Of course.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me that before?’

‘I . . . I’m sorry . . . I wanted to, but I’m in a delicate position, you can’t just hand over a baby without some assurances, surely you can understand my misgivings, dear Lamia?’

‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’

‘Chérifa used to say, “My little baby will drive Tata Lamia mad.” I think now I understand why.’

‘My dear God, our baby is alive . . . my baby is alive!’

‘I’m not asking you to take care . . .’

‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’

‘An adorable baby, the spitting image of its mother. She named the little mite Louiza . . .’

‘Louiza? It’s a girl? Oh, my God! Oh, my God!’

‘We’ve grown very fond of her, in fact I don’t know how we will manage to live without her.’

‘Thank you . . . thank you from the bottom of my heart.’

‘May God forgive me, but I could not bear to think of that baby being taken into care, Child Services simply don’t have the means, this whole wretched country is sinking into . . . into . . .’

‘If it was just the poverty, the corruption and the brutality, I wouldn’t mind, but when the idiots are in power, what’s to be done, you tell me that!’

‘She’ll be happy with you, I can tell. All I ask is that you bring her to visit from time to time, it would make us so happy.’

‘I owe you my life . . . I’ll never forget that.’

‘But I implore you, be more careful when you speak. You’re so forthright, it could land you in trouble.’